Thursday, June 26, 2008

Once again, I would like to thank Rúbel Mujica for his role in identifying and fixing the bug. I would also like to thank everyone else who has shown an interest in the Kwicks plugin and for all of your invaluable input!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Well I'm happy to announce that I have finally wrapped up the v1.5 update to the Kwicks plugin. Kwicks 1.5 builds upon the original release in several big ways - here is a summary of what's different:

Vertical Mode!

This was a common request, so there was no way I could leave it out of this release.

Min vs. Max

The previous release required developers to specify the "max" width of the active kwick. As of v1.5, developers may now opt to specify the width/height of all of all of the non-active kwicks instead. This feature doesn't really add new functionality, but is merely offered as a convenience.

Sticky Mode

When sticky mode is enabled, one kwick will always be open. This allows for more of an "accordion" type experience.

Custom Trigger Event

Kwicks 1.5 lets you specify the trigger event for the animation. The default is still 'mouseover', but many users had wanted to use 'click' in instead.

Smoother Animations

This release I did some refactoring of the code behind the animations. Several calculations were moved outside of the inner loops allowing for a less tasking, and consequently smoother, animation.

Packed Script

While this release still comes with fully commented and readable code, it also comes with a packed version which is far better for production use. The new packed version is only 2.4 KB, which is actually smaller than the original release.

All in all this is a huge addition to the original version - many of the excellent suggestions I have received were addressed, and I hope that you will find the added flexibility more helpful than confusing. I always believe simplicity is key, so I have tried to keep that in mind as the new features were added. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!